282 SUMMER 



structures. The wasp's nest one is afraid to touch lest it 

 should crumble like an ash, and fall in dust. Yet it is 

 strong too in its degree. The bigger ones which are rather 

 rarely found carry quite a fair weight and admirably serve 

 their nesting purpose. It is curious how very little has been 

 seen of the building process. They are made, as one may 

 see, of paper, which is wood-fibre, treated with a chemical 

 solution very much as the ' mortar ' was treated. But the 

 paper is very much finer and yet looser than the cells of the 

 ordinary wasp's nest in the ground. It is de luxe. Country 

 people often wonder exceedingly at the discovery of such a 

 nest, which is attributed to all sorts of insects. In one dis- 

 trict at any rate the nest is quite commonly found in bee hives. 

 When the Isle of Wight bee disease emptied the hives in one 

 parish a number of these nests were found, and so perfect were 

 they that several were preserved as museum specimens. 



As the season advances the wasp's character, if so human 

 a word is allowable, progressively deteriorates. While the 

 nest is building and work is demanded the whole community 

 is laborious. But as the need for labour slackens degenera- 

 tion begins. It is all partly perhaps the fault of the late born 

 males, the drones. But they are not the only delinquents. 

 The food changes. As August advances the wasps begin to 

 fall with fury upon other insects, especially flies, though they 

 will also clear off blight. If you are much abroad in a garden 

 in August you will scarcely avoid seeing some unfortunate fly 

 seized, beheaded, and dislimbed, with a mixture of fury and 

 precision that is diabolic. The trimmed corpse is carried off to 

 the swarm, for the corporate spirit is not yet dead. But from 

 this time the feeling for the society weakens, till finally each is 

 for himself; and hundreds gorge themselves into extinction 

 in the rotting fruit, before the queens have gone into hiding, or 

 the less greedy of the workers taken refuge on the ivy bloom. 



